Many aircrafts for flight-gear can be patched with amazing artwork done thru the years by outstanding FG artists. The livery database contains a nice collection of these liveries built thru the years. But each user needs to download any of these individually, to be able to enjoy them

The only disadvantage I found in the current set-up is for multi-playing. To be able to "see" the other user's livery, both the pilot and the company need to have the livery installed. Example, if you fly along a 737 that uses a given =non default= livery (that is the pilot installed it), but you did not installed, then you will not be able to see it, and the exercise of installing these liveries become a unnecessary computational exercise.

A solution:

Maybe if an aircraft will have "default" installed most liveries made in the past, then getting a given aircraft may also mean having the update livery database for such aircraft! , this way, all a pilot has to do to get a "customized" livery, is to have an updated aircraft from the source. I thought of this over the Spring festival, when D-LASER satisfactorily indicated seeing, to his surprise, Skyboat's very own customized Tour Livery on the MD-10:: This made possible thanks to D-LASER installing the FGMEMBERS MD-10 just hours earlier, and thus being all up-dated with a livery that existed in FG for only a few days. Quite a nice surprise

Requesting help!!

Installing all the liveries in the database, into the FGMEMBERS respective aircraft is a very convenient and easy move, but it requires an important amount of workmanship, and thus, I invite any volunteer that wants to help. We can do this together, as a community, one aircraft at a time!

The posts below exemplifies the steps required to get this goal achieved

Let's get those liveries installed, and let them exhibit themselves in all their glory in the FG world:: That was their intention by the authors and artists!!

Last edited by IAHM-COL on Tue May 05, 2015 6:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

What does git status says now?That we have changes ready to be committed, and a list of new files added --which are the liveries we intend to add

Committing, with git commitThe command git commit opens a text editior that allows adding a commit message. The title in yellow is required. But additional information can be provided. The source of the material (webpage), and the recognition to the great authors here can be doneAfter saving the document written in the text editor, we get a list of new objects that had been added/created

git status now indicates that we have local commits not present in the remote (your fork in github)And we can git push that commit to the remote

After pushed to our "own" fork in github we can verify there that the commit had been added as expected

And if everything looks good --as it should-- then we can proceed with requesting this new fantastic changes to be merged with FGMEMBERS repo doing a pull request

Doing the Pull request

Pull request button is on your fork's page, on the right.

Create the new pull request

you will receive a confirmation that the pull request is open! and that FGMEMBERs can proceed to accept these new liveries!

Celebrate your cooperation to the FG project, and its aircrafts!

Best,IH-COL

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

Just for your information, the plan is to provide liveries through the download center. We've not decided yet whether we will add the liveries directly to the aircraft packages, or make them optional. For some aircraft, adding all liveries adds considerably to the download size (on the scale of quadrupling the package). Not all people will want to install dozens of liveries just to fly the plane.

FGMEMBERS will be one of the "full install" variants.FGMEMBERS will also create a download catalog to be available via the download installer.

Best,IH-COL

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

An increase on an aircraft of 32.5% is not yet close to an expected quadrupling on the download size (such will be a 300% increase)I am curious to know, which aircraft has this jump in size after unpacking the whole collection.

BestIH-COL

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

It's been a while since I did the numbers, but IIRC I found the dhc6 grew five times as big, while the b1900d's size was tripled. It's the absolute size that matters anyway. A 1MB package that triples isn't much of a problem, while it probably is for a 200MB package. You can question whether adding 100+ MB to a package for stuff that some people are simply not even remotely interested in, is really increasing the user experience.

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

The dhc6 is, as you indicated, increased over 5 fold, close to six fold.But I do not think that an increase on 80MB over an aircraft size of purely functional (rendered) files to be of a concern. I can see we differ a bit on this perspective.

Noticing, as an example, that Installing a livery that no-one else has, only allows "me" to see it. Whereas flying a livery that all other multiplayers have, will allow a more immerse experience that makes the livery take a new life.

I would argue thou, that you have a very valid point. As an example, the p51d, which has been discussed before. The aircraft size is an outstanding 700MB in size, and the repo close exceed 1GB by itself!! :SBut really, the major impact in aircraft size comes from huge Source files, that are not used in the aircraft functioning or rendering. In cases such as this, your position takes a new much valid perspective

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

While it's nice having all liveries, I concur that it may not be a smart move to include all by default.

Liveries can take up huge amounts of space, relative to their added value (I've seen some in excess of 20mb!!! compress people, compress!).

Say you add an average of 50mbs (a complete guesstimate) of liveries to each plane in FG, and I have 100 of the 600 planes on FGMembers. That will take up an additional 5GB of space on my relatively small SSD... and bear in mind, I will probably never use a majority of them.

May I suggest an alternative?

Perhaps you could create another branch for the git repo, entitled "all-liveries" or something along those lines which is identical to master, except for the livery folder. This way, people have the option to clone or download the version they prefer.

I am adding the liveries as a "commit" here: see examples above.such commit can be separated in isolated braches a posteriori if we revise it pertinent.

So far it does not seem like to me here.After installing the great majority of liveries, I calculate the size of the whole Aircraft repository (all aircrafts installed) is not growing more than 1.5G, max. Note that not every aircraft in FG has liveries. Really we are looking around 2000 liveries total! (see the webpage stat). The increase of 1.5G is really not big deal over the complete aircraft database.

Again, in FGMEMBERs every aircraft is optional, so still the impact on individual aircrafts is still more disregading.

Lets keep tuned, as soon as I finish installing the liveries, I will output absolute values on size increase.

Note, as well, that frequently the installing of the livery is not as "simple". Sometimes xml editions are required, and moving files to proper positions as well. So for the end user, having the livery functioning out-of the box pays the bill for the small size difference.

Also, the point I raised above. If I use a given livery but Only I have it installed, no-one else but me is going to be able to see that artwork. Really, liveries take another concept when everyone involved (say a MP event) have it. So it makes sense that the default for a livery is have, as oppose to have not.

Best, IH-COL

Last edited by IAHM-COL on Thu May 07, 2015 6:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

The increase over the whole aircraft is about 50MB, but for one hundred liveries. No other aircraft has this wealth on livery database. and you can see that number of aircraft liveries decays really rapidly over here: http://liveries.flightgear.org/aircraft.php

I am now getting more and more convinced, that the effect size over installing all the liveries on the database is really totally neglectible, and we will see an increase of about 1.5GB on the whole collection of aircraft (ie FGDATA next with submodules!) That is we go from 28GB to 30GB to have the complete collection. I found that neglectible in relative terms.

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

As you can see, such an increase in size will indeed affect my install size.

I very much support FGMembers as it has made my life quite a lot easier (although that's partially because I already was a git user before), and I love having a majority of the planes I use in one directory.

However, I ask that you consider the opinions and arguments we make regarding this before you go ahead and install all of the 2000 liveries to the repo's master branches.

Or at least please consider making a separate branch, as I have suggested, so that we can opt out of it if do not want to fill our drives with liveries we will rarely if ever use.

I agree with you, it's nice seeing other people's liveries over MP, and it's nice having your livery seen too, but I dont think we should "force" (I agree this is a bit of a strong word, but for lack of a better one I use it) this upon people.

Hi Phil1. where are the "optional" liveries of the C172p? found them. There are 5. 2. The job is mostly done. I have completed the installation of liveries for every aircraft that has more than 20 liveries EDIT: I see Im missing the 787--- not for long!In the concept of a pricipal component analysis, and looking at the distribution of liveries/per aircraft as I showed above, I already did create the aircraft size increase that we will see. Other aircrafts one or two liveries per aircraft will not have the greater impact. The complete FGDATA next with submodules is currently 33G (with the .git folder, so the real git repository size). The "./Aircraft" directory (which is FGAddon after all additional aircrafts and livery expansions) is 14G.3. We can come back to speak about isolating the liveries in a branch, as you suggest. But importing them is the first step required to open that conversation, and have some real numbers to discuss. It may be unnecessary to open a new branch for most aircraft with 1 or 2 additional liveries only, if you see where I am going.4. Create the branch, adds an additional problem. The branch doesn't follow the development tip automatically

5.The solution I had everytime spoke about is modularity. Really, you will just install (init+update) those aircraft that fit your interest. So that will solve most of your repository size problem.

6. Isolating the liveries on its own branch has a very neglectible effect on the "repository" size. Actually. Because the repository, if you do a complete clone (as oppose to a single-branch approach) will contain ALL of the objects. So we have the same "net" size for No-liveries. ==Think about this point and if this point is unclear, lets talk about it again, since it is critical here.

Best, IH-COL

Last edited by IAHM-COL on Thu May 07, 2015 8:15 pm, edited 7 times in total.

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall

I also want you to take a look at your values. And they definitely don't correspond to triple or more of the aircraft size (which Gijs indicated do occur for a few exceptional cases , like the dhc6)

also, keep in mind that your numbers are telling us what is the size of the livery package without the extra liveries. What would be the size difference* after the extra liveries are installed, is what comes to more critical here.

If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall